Philip Pendleton Cooke
{{short description|American poet}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2022}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Philip Pendleton Cooke
| image = Philip Pendleton Cooke (1816–1850).png
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_name =
| birth_date = October 26, 1816
| birth_place = Martinsburg, Virginia, U.S.
| death_date = {{Death date and age|1850|1|20|1816|10|16}}
| death_place = Clarke County, Virginia, U.S.
| nationality =
| other_names =
| occupation =
| spouse = Williann Corbin Tayloe Burwell (1837−1850, his death)
| children = 5
| relatives = John Esten Cooke (brother)
John Pendleton Kennedy (cousin)
| years_active =
| known_for =
| notable_works = Froissart Ballads: and Other Poems
| signature = Signature of Philip Pendleton Cooke (1816–1850).png
}}
Philip Pendleton Cooke (October 26, 1816 – January 20, 1850) was an American lawyer and minor poet from Virginia.
Early and family life
Cooke was born on October 26, 1816,Trent, William Peterfield. Southern Writers: Selections in Prose and Verse. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1905: 276. in Martinsburg when it was then part of Virginia to the former Maria Pendleton and her husband, planter and delegate John R. Cooke (1788−1854).Toby Drews (ed.) Genealogies of Virginia Families from the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. IV (Genealogical Publishing Co., Inc. 1981) p. 686 He was thus descended from the First Families of Virginia. Of the large (13 child) family, his younger brother John Esten Cooke would become a minor novelist as well as lawyer, then a Confederate officer during the American Civil War while his cousin Philip St. George Cooke became a Union officer.William Thomas Doherty, Berkeley County, U.S.A.: a bicentennial history (Parsons Printing Company 1972) pp. 132n, 134n Much earlier, the Cooke brothers received a private education appropriate to their class. Philip attended Princeton University, and graduated in 1834.
Career
Cooke spent the majority of his life in the northern part of the Shenandoah Valley.Hubbell, Jay B. The South in American Literature: 1607-1900. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954: 502. At Princeton, Cooke wrote the poems "Song of the Sioux Lovers," "Autumn," and "Historical Ballads, No. 6 Persian: Dhu Nowas," as well as a short story, "The Consumptive" before graduation.Ehrlich, Eugene and Gorton Carruth. The Oxford Illustrated Literary Guide to the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982: 192. {{ISBN|0-19-503186-5}}
Admitted to the Virginia bar, Cooke followed in his father's profession as a lawyer. His two main hobbies, however, were hunting and writing, though he never made a profession out of his writing. He once wrote: "I detest the law. On the other hand, I love the fever-fits of composition."Parks, Edd Winfield. Ante-Bellum Southern Literary Critics. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1962: 139
Cooke lived for a time at Saratoga, the former home of Daniel Morgan.{{cite web|url=http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma04/kane/thesis/jecsaratoga.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060901115703/http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA04/kane/thesis/jecsaratoga.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=September 1, 2006 |title=Saratoga, Clarke County |publisher=Xroads.virginia.edu |date= |accessdate=2016-07-07}}
Death and legacy
Writings
Cooke believed his literary sustenance came from his library rather than from writing, despite several important literary figures — including John P. Kennedy and Rufus Wilmot Griswold — who encouraged him to write more. Edgar Allan Poe praised his work and wrote to him that he would "give your contributions a hearty welcome, and the choicest position in the magazine."Parks, Edd Winfield. Ante-Bellum Southern Literary Critics. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1962: 138 By 1835, he resolved to give up on poetry entirely.Hubbell, Jay B. The South in American Literature: 1607-1900. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954: 505. He believed that poetry was as barren "as a worn-out tobacco field" and that even William Cullen Bryant, who he considered "the master of them all," had "sheltered himself from starvation behind the columns of a political newspaper" rather than making money from poetry.Parks, Edd Winfield. Ante-Bellum Southern Literary Critics. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1962: 136 By 1847, the Southern Literary Messenger reported that Cooke had turned into a prose writer.Hubbell, Jay B. The South in American Literature: 1607-1900. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1954: 509.
Cooke was well-read and his poetry was inspired by Edmund Spenser, Geoffrey Chaucer and Dante Aligheri.Parks, Edd Winfield. Ante-Bellum Southern Literary Critics. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1962: 137 He also admired the prose work of Poe, which he told in a letter:
{{blockquote|I have always found some remarkable thing in your stories to haunt me long after reading them. The teeth in Berenice—the changing eyes of Morella—that red & glaring crack in the House of Usher—the pores of the deck in the MS. Found in a Bottle—the visible drops falling into the goblet in Ligeia.Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1992: 180. {{ISBN|0-8154-1038-7}}}}
References
{{reflist}}
External links
- [http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Cooke_Philip_Pendleton_1816-1850 Philip Pendleton Cooke (1816–1850)] at Encyclopedia Virginia
- [https://archive.org/details/froissartballads00cookrich Froissart Ballads: and Other Poems] at the Internet Archive
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Category:19th-century American poets
Category:19th-century American male writers
Category:Lawyers from Martinsburg, West Virginia
Category:People from Millwood, Virginia
Category:Poets from West Virginia
Category:Princeton University alumni
Category:19th-century American lawyers
Category:Cooke family (Virginia)